


Menace

by TheCavernMonster



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Characters will be tagged when they appear, Evil X is an asshole, Fluff and Angst, Gen, How Do I Tag, I swear I'm not ripping off Caught In The Spider's Web, It gets kinda angsty btw, Keralis is very worried, Literally all the hermits need a nap, Mumbo probably needs antidepressants, Phantoms (Minecraft), Redstone (Minecraft), Video Game Mechanics, all is not forgiven, currently on hold, winged Grian au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:48:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22838083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCavernMonster/pseuds/TheCavernMonster
Summary: When Grian disappears suddenly, leaving nothing but some blood and a broken communicator, Several of the Hermits take it upon themselves to try and find him.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 75





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first fic on here, so I hope it's any good. Constructive criticism is welcome :)  
> -Cav

It had been two days, and Mumbo was worried.  
Very, very worried.  
He paced inside the Sahara meeting room, anxiously checking his communicator.  
“He might still be asleep,” Iskall suggested from his chair. He had his feet up on the table, and was watching Mumbo with a worried expression.  
“For two DAYS?” Mumbo asked. “That’s not like him. That’s not like him at all.”  
The Brit suddenly turned and slammed his hands down on the table. He growled in frustration.  
“Mumbo, chill dude!” Iskall said, concerned for his friend. “We’ll find him. I swear we will.”  
Mumbo looked up from the table. “So you’re going to help me look, then?”  
Iskall nodded. “Absolutely.”  
Mumbo sighed, relieved that someone else was worried.  
“Okay great! Let’s start with his base. I’ve already messaged his communicator twice and I’ll message him again while we’re there!”  
Mumbo grabbed Iskall’s arm and pulled Iskall out of the hole in the meeting room window. Their elytras caught the air and Mumbo spammed the boost button on his, dragging them out of Sahara’s courtyard and into the clear sky.  
Iskall was surprised by how suddenly eager Mumbo seemed, but he supposed it was for the best. Grian might be mad at them if they burst in while he was catching up on sleep, but he would forgive them pretty quickly. That was just how Grian was. Especially since Mumbo had been worried, and that’s why they had burst in. Grian would tease him about it for a few weeks, and then that would be that.  
Mumbo and Iskall landed on top of Grian’s base, and they both shivered as they looked toward the ground. It was at least 150 blocks to the base’s glass rim, which you would land on if you fell. You could try to aim for the ocean, of course, but it was a long shot.  
“You take the inside, I’ll take the outside.” Mumbo said, launching off the building again.  
He circled the building, looking at the window edges. He could see Iskall searching the inside through the huge windows that took up most of the base’s curved walls.  
As Mumbo swooped lower and lower, he pulled out his communicator. He typed a private message to Grian.  
Grian> Hey, where are you?  
Mumbo started as he heard a faint buzz down below. The kind of buzz a communicator made when it had a private message.  
Mumbo dived down toward where he heard the sound come from. When he saw what was there, he jerked back, horrified.  
Blood smears covered the glass. Lots of blood. Like, a ton. There were several bloodstained feathers scattered around as well. Mumbo picked one up and examined it. It was Grian’s, all right.  
Mumbo looked around a bit more, then he saw a communicator lying by the edge of the glass. It was partially smashed, and several of the redstone wires were pulled out of place.  
Mumbo stared at it for a long moment, feeling shock settling in.  
“Iskall?! Could you come here?!” Mumbo yelled towards the base. The Swedish cyborg poked his head out of the base’s doorway.  
“Did you find-“ Iskall fell silent when he saw the blood and the feathers.  
Mumbo held up Grian’s broken communicator.  
“We need to contact the others,” Mumbo said.

The hermits all met at Stress’s castle, since it had one of the largest meeting rooms. Cub had offered one of the many rooms at ConCorp, but the others had turned down the offer on the grounds that several of them didn’t feel too keen on ConCorp and some of its business strategies. The Demise Mansion had also been suggested, but it was still lined with traps, and the hermits might not remember all of them.  
Xisuma sat at the head of the table, with Stress on his left and Mumbo on his right. Iskall was next to Mumbo, comforting his distraught friend. On Iskall’s right there were Cleo and Joe, talking in hushed voices. Next to Joe were Scar and Cub, who were both looking very concerned, their businessman personas dropped. Next to them were Ren and Doc. Ren’s ears were flat against his head and his tail was pointing straight down. Doc’s mechanical eye wasn’t glowing like usual, and he looked very distracted, glancing around the room every few seconds.  
Tango, Zedaph, and Impulse were sitting on the other side of the table, each keeping to himself. None of them felt like saying anything. False and Wels were next to each other, between Stress and Impulse. Neither of them actually knew what was going on, and they were exchanging quiet guesses. On Impulse, Zedaph, and Tango’s other side, Python was in a similar situation, but by himself. He was fidgeting in his seat awkwardly, waiting for someone to explain the reason for the meeting, and feeling not quite sure why he was even still there anymore.  
At the end of the table, Keralis and Bdubs were sitting so closely together that they were practically sharing a seat. As the two ‘newest’ members of the group, they felt a bit shut out, and Keralis caught himself fondly imagining sitting next to his friend and partner, Xisuma. Next to them, the only hermit hermit, TFC, who had never met Grian as far as he could remember, was sitting stiffly and wishing that he could go back to his bunker.  
Xisuma cleared his throat, and the room fell silent. X had that kind of effect on people.  
“Okay,” he said, his voice echoing through the speakers on the front of his helmet. “As some of you know, Grian is apparently missing. His communicator was found partially smashed, surrounded by blood and his feathers.”  
False gave a small gasp.  
Xisuma’s voice was calm and stony, but you could hear the slight crack in it as he spoke. “Mumbo and Iskall are going to give the details of the case.”  
All eyes turned toward the two hermits in question. Mumbo took a deep breath, then shook his head. Iskall sighed and spoke. “Well, it’s basically what Xisuma said. Mumbo here got pretty nervous when Grian vanished for two days. So we went to his base, and found blood and feathers all over, and...this.” Iskall pulled Grian’s broken communicator out of his bag. Everyone stared at it, as if offended that it could be here, broken, instead of fixed and with its owner.  
Iskall put the communicator on the table.  
There was a long silence.  
“Hey...” Scar said slowly. “Wait a sec.” He turned to Iskall. “Can you pass me that communicator real quick,” he asked, pointing.  
Iskall pushed the communicator along the table a bit so that it was in front of Scar.  
Scar picked it up and examined it, then pulled out one of the wires.  
Mumbo gave an exclamation, his mustache twitching angrily. Iskall put a hand on Mumbo’s shoulder, and he quieted down.  
Scar twisted the wire between his fingers, then said, still staring at it, “this wire is a Cherry product. It looks like at least half the redstone in here is.”  
X made a noise of confusion. “But, Cherry wasn’t even open when I made it. It can’t be.” Mumbo cleared his throat. “A-actually, Grian broke it a while back and I used Cherry products when I fixed it.”  
Iskall snorted. “Mumbo, you make your OWN redstone. You have it automated. Why on EARTH would you use Cherry instead?”  
Mumbo was about to respond when Scar cut him off.  
“My point is that at Cherry Computers we add special heavy duty protection features to all of our products. There are only a few things that can break them.” He counted on his fingers. “Another Cherry product, a dragon, fire after 10 minutes or so, and heavy fall damage.”  
“What is this, an ad for Cherry now?” Tango said awkwardly. A few people laughed, but it was uncomfortable and they stopped fairly quickly.  
Scar shook his head. “No, but it’s proof of part of what happened. Unless Grian was attacked by a dragon -unlikely since they’re so heavily endangered- he crashed. It explains the feathers and the broken communicator.”  
“But not the blood,” Mumbo said rawly. He put his head in his hands and Iskall began patting him on the back.  
X sighed. “Okay, so that’s part of the mystery solved.” He pulled out a slip of paper and a pencil. “Can everyone who saw Grian in the past week write down the last time they saw him and what he was doing on this piece of paper? It’ll make things a bit easier.”  
As the paper went around, Joe pulled out his own notebook and began writing in it. Cleo leaned over and read what he was writing. She pointed to something in it, and Joe crossed it out, smiling.  
When the paper was back to Xisuma, he showed Iskall and Mumbo what it said:

•I saw him 5 days ago for a resource trade. He needed ice.  
•I saw him flying in the Nether Hub 3 days ago. He looked busy.  
•He asked me for wood 6 days ago.  
•I saw him flying over the Shopping district about 2 days ago at sunset. He was flying weird.  
•I saw a blobby shape that could have been him fly over my ship late at night 2 days ago.  
•I saw him 2 days ago. He was overworking himself at Sahara and I told him to go home.

Iskall pointed to the second-to-last entry. Cleo’s entry. “That’s the latest anyone saw him.” Mumbo read Cleo’s entry again. “Kinda vague though, innit? She saw a blobby shape that could have been him. That’s not a very good lead.”  
Iskall shrugged. “It’s the only one we have bro.”  
X clapped his hands together, manipulating the room’s tension like a guitar string. “Everyone keep an eye out for anything suspicious, and don’t walk into possible danger for a while. Meeting adjourned.”  
As everyone departed, Keralis and Bdubs caught up with Xisuma.  
“Hello my darling shishwami.” Keralis said, hugging Xisuma around the neck. X relaxed instantly at the sound of the softspoken man’s nickname for him. “Hey, Keralis,” he said with a smile that no one could see behind his helmet.  
As the group walked out of the room, Keralis and Xisuma discussed Grian’s disappearance. Bdubs butted in every once in a while, but mostly stayed silent. It wasn’t until X had flown off and it was just him and Keralis that he dared suggest what he had been thinking.  
“What if it was one of the other hermits?” Bdubs said. Keralis eyed him intently. “What do you mean, Bubbles?” Bdubs looked away at the nickname.  
“I mean, Scar said that Cherry stuff can be broken by other Cherry stuff. What if someone attacked Grian and they smashed the communicator?”  
Keralis shrugged. “Maybe, but that would be pretty mean. I don’t know if anyone here is that cruel.”  
Bdubs nodded. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”  
But he couldn’t help but wonder.

The first thing Grian noticed when he woke up was that he wasn’t in his base. The ground was soft, but it wasn’t his bed. It was damper, and thinner.  
Grian sat up and looked around. He appeared to be in a cave, lying on a bed of moss. There was the sound of heavy wind ripping by outside, howling and echoing through the cave. The wind didn’t quite reach the inside of the cave, but it was still very, very audible.  
Grian pulled himself to his feet. The stalactites and stalagmites created pillars around the room, making it hard to maneuver.  
Grian folded his wings tightly behind his back. He didn’t want to risk damaging them any more than they already were. They were missing their feathers in several places and hurt quite a bit.  
As he walked through the cave, he began shivering a bit. He was in an dank stone cave, and his very wet red jumper wasn’t going to protect him from too much, since it was soaking.  
20 minutes later, Grian still couldn’t find the exit, although he was much, much colder. He turned and went back the direction he came. As he walked, one of his wings, numbed by the cold, brushed against the roof of the cave, and touched soft underbelly. There was an uproarious hissing and screeching as hundreds, probably thousands, of phantoms woke up and all began flying around the cave at once. Grian yelled in fear and dropped onto the ground, covering his head with his wings.  
After a while, the screaming subsided, although now there was thunder rumbling, which made things certainly louder. Grian relaxed and began to stand back up, when a voice behind him said, “don’t you know it’s rude to wake somebody up from a nap?”  
Grian jumped a mile and whipped around. A man was standing there. He was wearing a red and tan shirt with some kind of chest piece, red pants, and a gray helmet. His arms were crossed and if his face had been visible behind the helmet’s tinted glass, Grian would have expected an expression of mild annoyance.  
In fact, the figure kind of looked like...  
“Xisuma?!” Grian asked, squinting at the man.  
The man made a noise of frustration. “Why does EVERYONE always mix me up with my brother?! So annoying...”  
Grian blinked in surprise. “X has a BROTHER?! Why doesn’t anyone tell me these things!”  
X’s brother grunted. “Probably because I’m evil AND so much BETTER than him! Oh yeah, I’m EVIL X!” Evil X gave a very melodramatic laugh. Grian raised one eyebrow. “Your mother played favorites with the naming just a tad, huh?”  
Evil paused for a moment. “Uhhhhhhhh...”  
Apparently he didn’t care to answer that, because he moved on.  
“You, hermit, are going to be MY newest minion! You will work with me to DESTROY THIS WORLD ONCE AND FOR ALL!” Evil laughed melodramatically again.  
“Woah woah woah!” Grian said, backing away and raising his hands and wings. “I don’t want to be anyone’s evil minion. I might cause just a teeeeny tiny bit of chaos constantly all the time, but I’m not a bad guy!”  
Evil paused, then casually said, “no, you work for me now.”  
Grian shook his head. “No. No, I don’t think I will.” Then he smiled. Evil gave a growl of irritation, which only made Grian smile more. He was purposefully trying to annoy Evil. It was something that he was very good at, and the more annoying he was, the more likely that Evil would get rid of him. Which meant either being able to go back to his friends, or left here to find his own way to escape.  
Evil then threw his head back and laughed a real laugh, making it possible to see under his helmet for a second. From what Grian could see, he had silvery long hair. Before he could get a better view, Evil moved his head again, staring at Grian ominously.  
“I THOUGHT you might say that! That’s why I prepared something special, just in case.” Evil’s hands began glowing and electricity crackled around them. Grian backed away again. “What is that?” He whispered, scared. Evil‘s smile was in his voice. “Oh, does Xisuma not use his magic in front of the other Hermits? I figured a goody-goody like him wouldn’t.”  
Grian was pressed against a stalagmite now. The stone dug into his back.  
Evil took a step forward. He appeared to be glowing now. “This curse,” he said in a low voice, “I tried something like it on my brother once. Did he ever tell you that story? I think he only ever told Biffa the whole thing, and I’ve already taken care of him.” Grian did not know (nor did he care) who Biffa was. All he wanted was to get out.  
Evil raised his arms for the blast, and Grian flinched back, expecting pain.  
Instead, it felt kind of like being lightly hit by a blunt arrow.  
Grian hesitantly opened his eyes, then closed them again as waves of nausea hit him. It took about a minute for the nausea to pass, and then Grian opened his eyes again.  
Evil was bent over Grian, who had apparently fallen over. He looked like a child that had asked for a puppy at Christmas and had gotten a goldfish named Puppy: fed up and yet curious at the same time.  
Grian jerked away, yelping a bit at how close Evil was to him.  
Evil’s voice had changed to a satisfied tone, when he spoke. “Perfect! Now you’ll feel...inclined...to cause chaos.” Grian wanted to point out that he already felt inclined to cause chaos and therefore the spell hadn’t done anything, but used his better judgment and didn’t.  
Evil held out his hand to Grian, who took it and allowed himself to be helped up.  
Evil led Grian through the cave, which appeared to actually be some kind of labyrinth, to a 2x2 open piston door. Evil and Grian walked down the hall past several doors, to a heavy wooden one that had “MINIONS” written on the front.  
Evil pushed it open to reveal a spacious dormitory with room for about 12 people. Five of the beds were occupied, but all the others looked untouched.  
“Pick a bed, you’ll be here a while,” Evil said, slapping Grian on the back.  
Grian wandered in and selected a bed in the far right corner, away from the sleeping minions. He had been feeling off ever since that spell, and now he just wanted to fall into bed again. A real one, this time.  
Grian flopped onto the bed, not even removing his shoes, and fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keralis and Bdubs go to the beach, Mumbo is losing it a bit, and Grian finds something interesting.

It had been four days since Grian had gone missing, and Bdubs was nervous.  
Bdubs had always been a bit on the twitchy side, prone to being the third wheel and always a bit overeager. He was also probably the most excitable hermit, yelling and sometimes scaring his friends and animals. But this...this was a whole new level.  
Bdubs had taken to hiding in some new random obscure part of town every day, and scribbling in a notebook. If he were spotted, he would run away to another location and continue his work. This made him very hard to locate. Today, however, Keralis had the luck of knowing exactly where Bdubs had glone.  
That is to say, nowhere.  
Keralis walked through town, and then stopped, looking up a hill to where a castle made of diorite rested.  
Keralis took it slow as he entered. He didn’t want Bdubs to know he was there and run away again. As Keralis tiptoed through the building, he heard the sound of writing coming from the circular courtyard. He peeked around the corner into the walled-in area. Bdubs was sitting in a wagon filled with barrels, bent over his notebook and rubbing his eyes.  
Keralis walked up to the wagon, and to the nervous man inside. “Bubbles, there you are!” Keralis said happily, like he had just stumbled across his friend and hadn’t walked into his home specifically to find him. Bdubs jumped, before registering whom he had just heard the voice of.  
“Hey Keralis,” he said in as close to an upbeat voice as he could manage on 2 hours of sleep.  
“Heyy, so I was wondering if you needed to...unwind at all?” Keralis asked. Bubbles hadn’t run away yet, so that was a good sign, Keralis thought.  
“Oh, no thanks Keralski. I’m good,” Bdubs said.  
“Really, because I thought we could play a little RUN now that it’s restocked? Or work on some new marketing strategies for IDEA?” Keralis asked. “RUN is very relaxing,” he added.  
Bdubs shook his head. “I’m not letting you spend all of IDEA’s profits on gambling again.” Then he gave a small laugh.  
Keralis was glad that he was at least laughing, but it wasn’t enough. “Come on!” Keralis grabbed Bdubs by the armpits and yanked the lightweight man out of the wagon. “Let’s go to the minigame district! Or do some shopping! Or, oh! We could go to the coral reef by Doc’s place!”  
Bdubs shifted in Keralis’s grip. “Ehh, I dunno...”  
Keralis resisted the urge to facepalm. He had to pull his least favorite card.  
Keralis set Bdubs down, then grabbed his face. “Bubbles, look into my eyes, and nothing but my eyes. We’re. Going. Swimming!” Keralis then let go of his friend’s face and took a step back.  
Bdubs blinked a few times as Keralis’s ‘influence’ set in. “Okay, okay.” Bdubs said, smiling again and shaking his head a bit. “We’re going swimming.”  
Keralis felt happy despite himself. He didn’t like using his ‘influence’. Especially on his friends. It was one of his only magical skills, and he rarely used it. But seeing Bubbles perk up a bit, even if it was just for a few seconds, made it feel all worth it.  
“Great! Now let’s see if I remember which portal it’s through again,” Keralis said eagerly.  
One walk, one portal journey, and a short fly via elytra later, Bdubs and Keralis were walking through the hallways of the Nether Hub and reading each sign they passed.  
“It’s down this hall, I think,” Keralis muttered quietly.  
“Yanno I really hope it is,” Bdubs replied in a normal volume. His faint lisp was more pronounced than usual today, probably because he hadn’t been sleeping much.  
Keralis was worried about a lot of things, but Bubbles was high-priority. After Bubbles was cheered up, he could go find Shishwami and do something with him! And then...he’d go back to his house and pet his dogs...or he could check IDEA! It was a big store, and it would take a long time to check and restock! And then that would be another thing that Shishwami and Bubbles wouldn’t have to worry about.  
Bdubs’ voice startled Keralis out of his plans for the day.  
“Keralis! I found it!”  
Keralis stopped and turned toward Bdubs. He was standing by a portal with a sign indicating that it led to Doc’s property, and to the reef.  
Keralis grinned. “Nice,” He said. Then he jumped into the portal.  
Keralis felt his stomach twist as he fell through the portal. The feeling of having your body deconstructed, transported across dimensions, and then reassembled in exactly the right way was a weird feeling.  
Keralis straightened and looked out over the magic island, then turned toward the crystalline light blue of the tropical ocean water.  
Bdubs fell through the portal a second later, knocking into Keralis.  
“Sorry Keralis,” he said, untangling himself from his friend. Keralis didn’t respond. He just pointed toward the ocean.  
Bdubs and Keralis stared at it for a long second, before Keralis nudged Bdubs and then said, “hey bro...race you to the water.” Before Bdubs could fully process Keralis’ words, Keralis took off running. Then Bdubs realized what had been said, and ran after.  
Keralis paused to pull off his shoes and his gray baseball cap, then he jumped in. Bdubs joined him a second later.  
They laughed together for a moment, and then they dove under the surface.  
There were few things that Keralis knew of that were as beautiful as the reef. It stretched for nearly a mile, and was every color of the rainbow. It practically glowed. Small fish darted in and out of the reef, each one competing to be the brightest.  
“Paradise...” he whispered slowly, getting water in his mouth. It didn’t matter because of the conduit that allowed them to breathe underwater, which was stationed nearby, but Keralis still attempted to spit out the mouthful of water. This resulted in him getting even more water in his mouth. He opened his abnormally large eyes up all the way and air bubbles shot out of his nose. Bdubs was silently shaking with laughter, sending his own bubbles up to the surface. He swam over to Keralis and poked him lightly in the shoulder. Keralis turned, and Bdubs pointed deeper into the reef. Keralis smiled and nodded, swimming alongside Bdubs to the sea floor.  
Bdubs and Keralis lay on their backs underwater, looking up to the surface. Schools of fish swam by, and light filtered down to make everything glow. Keralis savored it. There was nothing quite like a trip to the reef to take your mind off things.  
Suddenly, there was a splash. Keralis and Bdubs both sat up and turned toward the noise.  
Joe was there, on the surface, collecting various items in a bucket. He scooped up a black and red fish, a broken piece of coral, and a piece of kelp. Joe smiled at the items. Keralis strained his ears to hear through the water.  
“Hello little guy,” he said to the fish. “I’m gonna hafta drown you now, which is really too bad...” Then Joe shrugged and flipped the bucket over onto the sand.  
Keralis and Bdubs both crept closer to the surface, watching Joe carefully.  
Joe picked up the kelp and positioned it on the sand. Then he took the (now seemingly dead) fish and the coral, and positioned them near the kelp. Then he pulled out a map and began carefully adjusting the fish and the coral. He took a twig nearby and stuck it next to the dead fish.  
Joe turned back toward the island and called, “that look about right?”  
Someone, this person definitely British and female, said something that Keralis couldn’t make out. Joe nodded and moved the coral a bit further away, and then straightened it.  
Joe then pulled a small rock out of his jeans pocket. “Okay, so Gri was flying over your ship going...which way?”  
The British woman said something again.  
“Right so then...” Joe angled his rock to be moving over the fish, heading to the fish’s upper left.  
The British woman said something else, this one Keralis caught a few words of. “...base...windows...kall...”  
Joe shook his head. “But the trajectory makes no sense.” He fell back onto the sand, dropping the rock. “It’s a real dang crazy mystery.”  
“Aw, don’t be like that, Joe,” the woman said, moving closer to the water. Keralis and Bdubs recognized the voice at the same time, and exchanged glances.  
Cleo.  
The blurry silhouette of the zombie woman kneeled next to Joe. “I know it’s confusing, but we can’t just sit around and do nothing! We can’t be acting daft right n-“ she stopped talking suddenly. “Hey, what’s this?” Cleo’s arm reached down and picked something up. She examined it carefully.  
Keralis gasped, filling his mouth with water again. It was his hat!  
Cleo sniffed it. “Keralis. The scent is fresh. He must be here.” She and Joe both stood up, and began looking around.  
Keralis pulled Bdubs deeper into the water, attempting to hide. Cleo didn’t have a particularly high opinion of how trustworthy either of them was, and Keralis hated the idea of the yelling fit that would come from being found eavesdropping.  
Then suddenly Bdubs pulled himself out of Keralis’ grip and swam to the surface.  
Bdubs splashed out of the water and pulled himself up using some boulders. Keralis surfaced a moment later.  
Cleo and Joe both turned to look at the two, Joe with a look of surprise, and Cleo with a look of baffled disgust.  
“Heyyyy, Cleo and Joe! The two nicest people on the island!” Bdubs said, grinning awkwardly and finger-gunning them.  
Cleo growled, her gray-green hands curling into fists.  
Bdubs raised his hands up in front of himself. “You know, that top looks GREAT on you, Cleo!”  
Cleo glanced down at her blue off-the-shoulder sweater. “This is the same thing I wear every day,” she said flatly.  
“Exactly.” Bdubs said.  
Keralis began speaking before this hideous attempt at flattery could continue.  
“Sorry, we didn’t mean to eavesdrop...” he said ashamedly. “We’ll be going now.” Keralis sloshed his way out of the water and began heading back towards the portal. He decided against asking for his hat back.  
“Hey, you guys are trying to figure out what happened to Grian?” Bdubs asked Cleo and Joe.  
“No!” Cleo barked, at the same time that Joe nodded and said “yep”.  
Cleo blinked and then said, “all right we are.”  
“Yanno that’s funny,” Bdubs said, “because that’s what I’m trying to do too!”  
Keralis was surprised. He’d never thought of trying to play detective to help find Grian. It seemed like others had, though.  
“Hey, we should team up!” Joe said. “You add a little more brain power, you can get a lot more results.”  
Bdubs and Cleo nodded, although the latter begrudgingly.  
“Uh,” Keralis said quietly. “Could I help too?”  
Bdubs nodded. “Of course, Keralski!”  
“Great!” Joe said. “Let’s all meet up by iTrade tomorrow at 5:00.”  
As Keralis and Bdubs departed, Keralis felt a new sense of responsibility. He was helping now. He was working with other hermits to solve an important mystery.  
He’d try his best, that’s for sure.

Mumbo wouldn’t consider himself overemotional. When something went wrong for him, whether it was that he had lost something, or that Grian had pranked him on a bad day, or that his latest machine had broken yet again, or all of the above, he never complained. He never cried, or yelled, or threw a fit. He just sighed, rubbed his eyes, took a breather, and then fixed the problem. He occasionally joked that he had the most British version of anger out of everyone.  
He was trying to hold that manner up as a shield in the face of Grian’s disappearance, but it wasn’t his natural response.  
The night after he and Iskall had found the feathers, he cried himself to sleep. When his alarm went off the next morning, he was greeted with wet pillows and a hollow feeling in his chest that he had carried with him ever since.  
Everything, even the smallest activities, were harder. It took him three hours to make a looped redstone signal. And then another three to debug a new machine.  
It wasn’t just redstone, either. Mumbo struggled to get out of bed, even though he constantly had nightmares about Grian. He hadn’t done his hair, or shaved his stubble, or even taken care of his mustache. With a small smile, he remembered a conversation that he’d had with Grian at a meeting months ago.  
“You know, there’s no rule against showering, dude.”  
I smell flowery!”  
Mumbo stared up at the ceiling of his control room, where he was now. He had been working on blueprints, as usual. Their complex scribbles lined the papers all over the floor.  
Mumbo’s pen lay forgotten next to him. He didn’t feel like working. He didn’t feel like doing much of anything beyond lying in bed, or trying to find Grian.  
Trying to find Grian...  
Mumbo stood up suddenly and ran back to his bedroom, where he had left his communicator. He had an idea.  
He flipped the communicator over and opened the hatch in the back. Mumbo reached into the circuitry to test that he could without getting a shock, and then pulled his hand out.  
Mumbo turned on the communicator, and a message flashed onscreen.  
Welcome: MumboJumbo  
Mumbo turned the communicator over again.  
He carefully moved aside the wires to find a small redstone timer in the back. It clicked away, sending small signals to the rest of the device.  
Mumbo smiled. That was the thing that kept the messages constantly updated. Which meant that the part he needed would be right... There! Directly below the timer was a smaller timer. This one was slower, ticking maybe once every minute and a half or so. That was the one clearing the chat, making older messages harder to retrieve.  
Mumbo carefully twisted the wire, blocking the signal.  
He looked back at his screen. It was glitching, messages appearing from days—no, weeks earlier.  
Mumbo watched the messages appear. There was the last message from Grian, a week and a half ago.  
I’ll be back at Sahara in a bit, just needed to grab some wood.  
Mumbo sighed, then yelled suddenly. The message conversation that he was looking for appeared: a lengthy chat between Keralis and Xisuma.  
Mumbo clicked on Xisuma’s username, and a small menu appeared. It had Xisuma’s profile picture, and a small note saying that Xisuma was a Communications System Admin, meaning that X could do a variety of things on his communicator that others couldn’t.  
Including accessing a log of where everyone’s communicators were at all times.  
Mumbo clicked on his own name, in the lower lefthand corner, and another menu appeared. It had some settings-related options, like what color you wanted your name to be in chat. Mumbo ignored those options, and hit the last option on the menu: Log out?  
The screen flickered for a second, and Mumbo was worried that he was about to lose his progress, but he didn’t. Instead another menu appeared:  
Please log back in to write in the chat.  
Mumbo tapped Xisuma’s username again. The screen flickered, and Mumbo thought about what he was doing. He had never done anything like it before, but he was too focused to care about consequences, or what would happen if he messed up.  
Then the screen flashed white and Mumbo flipped over his communicator again and pinched a large wire running right through the middle of the communicator.  
Sparks flew out of the back, and Mumbo flinched. Then, with both his hands still jammed in the communicator’s back, he looked at the screen.  
It was glitching like crazy, and the text on the screen was a bit harder to read because of that. But Mumbo smiled nonetheless. It said exactly what he needed it to say:  
Welcome: Xisuma.  
Mumbo pulled one hand out of the communicator, keeping the bigger wire pinched. He prayed that Xisuma didn’t have his communicator turned on.  
Mumbo took a moment to examine the screen. So many new buttons! He’d have loved to play around if he had been on X’s account with permission, but he wasn’t.  
He clicked a button in the corner, and a map of the island with red dots where everyone’s communicators were appeared on the screen. Their usernames were next to the dot. At the top of the screen was the hour, the day, the month, and the year.  
Mumbo dragged a finger over the hour clock. The number onscreen shifted and so did the dots, showing where everyone had been an hour ago.  
Mumbo smiled another tired smile. He moved the date and time to about 6:00 PM a week ago. The last day Grian had been seen.  
There was Grian’s red dot, inside Sahara. Another dot, this one marked Iskall85, moved across the screen toward the Sahara building. It landed by Grian’s dot, and they both moved around together for a bit, before Grian’s dot moved away from Sahara and toward his base.  
Grian’s dot took a detour over the shopping district, and was almost at his base when another dot began moving toward him, from nearby.  
Grian’s dot stopped by the outskirts his base. That must’ve been the crash. The other dot was still moving. Two or three minutes later, the second dot arrived. It stopped by Grian’s dot, and then there was a pause.  
Grian’s dot blinked out.  
Mumbo stared at the second dot’s name as it flew away. He released the wire that he was pinching, and after some more glitches, he was sent back to the login screen.  
There would be consequences for this.  
Oh ho, there certainly would be.  
And now he knew who would be facing them.

Grian shifted as he woke up again. It took a moment for him to remember his situation: kidnapped, cursed, trapped. Nothing good, to say the least.  
His head and wings hurt even more than they had last time he was awake. He pulled himself up, and examined his wings. He didn’t know how damaged they were, and it would be worth noting if he were missing major patches of feathers. He hadn’t had a chance to examine them last time he had been awake due to the cramped nature of the cave he had woken up in, but now, in the dormitory, he could spread his wings to their fullest extent, and meticulously examine them.  
They seemed largely undamaged, except for a few bent and messy feathers. The most damage he came across was dealt to his largest feathers on his left side, all of which had either gone missing, or had been bent until a single hit could probably break them off. It was the feathers that you would clip on a bird to keep them from flying. Grian grimaced. He couldn’t fly without his larger feathers, meaning his wings were pretty much useless right now.  
Grian yawned and pulled himself all the way out of the bed. He needed to get out of there pronto, but he didn’t know how. The walls were stone, he couldn’t fly, and he didn’t even know the way out, much less the way back home.  
Then he pondered something: could he use the respawn?  
Whenever something happened to one of the hermits, something that ended up bringing them within death’s grasp, they would ‘respawn’ when their body died, like in a video game. They would wake up wherever they last slept, with only their clothes and sometimes accessories. No one fully understood it, but it was normal for them.  
Grian sighed as he remembered that no, he had just woken up. If he respawned, he would respawn right where he was standing, give or take a foot or so.  
So...he was stuck.  
Grian didn’t like being stuck. Maybe it was because of some of his birdlike traits, or maybe it was survival instinct, or maybe both. But no matter the reason, he didn’t like it. It made him feel all anxious and fragile. And this was exactly the situation that he hated. A small space with no known exits, and someone who was most certainly dangerous enough to really harm him, and who didn’t care if he did.  
Grian decided to take his mind off of his situation by exploring the dorm. It was mostly plain, with blank stone walls and very generic beds. Each bed had the typical basic wooden bed frame, with a mattress and a comforter. No cases. Each bed also had one pillow, also without a case. There were six beds on each side, with a small chest next to each; likely for clothes and maybe weapons. Five of the beds, the ones Grian had tried to stay as far away from as possible when picking his own bed, weren’t made. They were most certainly in use, which was very worrying.  
Grian scanned the other side of the room one last time, and didn’t see anything else, except for...  
A metal hand was poking out from underneath one of the beds.  
Grian walked over to it and pulled on the metal hand. It was clearly attached to something. Grian pulled on the hand a bit more, then decided to move the bed instead. After several minutes of grunting and pushing, the bed had been moved over about a foot and a half to reveal what was undeniably a broken humanoid robot.  
The bot was larger than Grian, but shorter than Xisuma and lankier than Doc. It was made of yellow and pink metal, which was bent and broken in places, its redstone wires poking through. A screen covered the area where the eyes and forehead would be on a human, though it had a clearly defined mouth and nose in exactly the correct places. It also had some kind of safety goggles with another screen on the front. The screen on the goggles was smashed.  
Grian tapped the robot. It didn’t move. It looked like it hadn’t moved in a long time.  
Grian kicked it lightly. It made a dinging noise, like you would expect from a metal robot.  
Grian crouched down by it. He picked up two of the redstone wires that were still partially in the machine, and touched them together.  
Sparks flew out of the wires, and there were several loud cracking noises, like when you’re lighting a gas stove. The robot’s arm began spasming. Grian yelped and dropped the wires. The moment the two wires separated, the noise and spasms stopped.  
Grian blinked at the robot. Even though it wasn’t active, he was sure it was laughing at him.  
Grian pushed the bed back over the robot, covering it again.  
Maybe the robot could help him get out of here.  
Maybe it knew where the exit was, and maybe that’s why it had been smashed.  
Or maybe it was some kind of cleaning robot and it had vacuumed up Evil’s earbuds.  
Either way, Grian decided, he would fix it.


End file.
